PRESIDENT OBAMA / PRESIDENTE OBAMA

Do you believe in hope or faith? LOST.
Why the first thing Barak Obama does before becoming the 44th States President is going to church?

Yes, we can! Can we?

¿Tenéis esperanza o fe?

¿Por qué lo primero que hace Barak Obama antes de convertirse en el Presidente número 44 de los Estados Unidos es ir a la iglesia?

Yes, we can. Can we?

LAST SURF SUPPER / ÚLTIMA CENA SURFERA

Last surf supper in Tokyo before going back Madrid I was really tired. This is not a big surprise. I went with my cousins Ayumi, Tadashi, Toki and their close and fit friends, Ueki´s family, to a Chinese restaurant in Kamakura. I was tired as I couldn´t sleep properly the night before because my friend left the window´s room opened without noticing so we were cold. Dinner was great and we were seven people and not twelve plus one supposed to be in the Last Supper. I´m not interested in religion. This is not a big surprise either. But I was feeling sad to say goodbye to my favourite island so last supper had an important meaning for me. Of course this is not a big surprise, I´m sure of it. The thing is that I was taking pictures of us, as usual, with my Canon camara, an exboyfriend gift. The Ueki´s family is composed by Kaori, mum, Mitsuo, dad, and Tatsuya, the kid. Tatsuya is the best friend of my cousin Toki, the cuddly pig´s collector. Yeap, I know it sounds weird but once you begin to collect pigs you can´t stop. They were the young playing kids, smiling and doing silly things as I had to conform trying to be the adult I am not. We were talking about Mitsuo carved necklace, beautiful ones, and about Tatsuya´s being the best surfer in Tokyo and one of the greats in Japan. This was a big surprise. I saw him, fifteen years old, smily and muscle boy, so then I just thought something like hundreds of people around us have a special gift and we don´t know. They look like just simple kids, men or women, doing their day by day business, and then you see some pictures of their skills and you think we are a priviledge animals. I never saw before a snake body as perfect´s as Tatsuya breaking the waves with such style. I never realized before how beautiful a froozen second in live could be. So then I looked at him again and thought: is not a big surprise he is the surf champion. Dinner was delicious. I was tired. To say goodbye to a part of me was a very difficult decision.

This is Tatsuya´s blog. It is in Japanese so sorry non Japanese speakers. But his pictures are amazing, it doesn´t matter if you love surf or not. I hope you enjoy.

http://tatsuya236.blog64.fc2.com/

La última cena surfera en Tokyo antes de volar a Madrid yo estaba agotada. Nada sorprendente. Fui a un restaurante chino en Kamakura con mis primos Ayumi, Tadashi, Toki y sus amigos, la familia Ueki, en perfecta forma física. Estaba agotada porque la noche anterior no había podido dormir bien porque mi amigo dejó la ventana abierta sin darse cuenta y pasamos algo de frío. La cena estaba buena y éramos siete compartiéndola y no doce más uno como se supone que era La Última Cena. No me interesa la religión. Tampoco resulta nada sorprendente. Pero lo menciono porque era mi última noche en mi isla, Japón, y estaba triste sabiendo que ahora solo tocaba el adiós, el hasta pronto. Esto tampoco parece nada sorprendente, por lo menos para mí. La cuestión es que me dediqué a hacer fotos con mi Canon, como de costumbre. La familia Ueki está compuesta por Kaori, la madre, Mitsuo, el padre y Tatsuya, el hijo. Tatsuya es uno de los mejores amigos de mi primo Toki, el coleccionista de cerditos de peluche. Se que suena un poco raro pero una vez que empiezas a coleccionar cerdos no puedes parar. Lo digo por experiencia propia. Ellos eran los jóvenes sonriente, juguetones, haciendo en tonto mientras yo tenía que conformarme intentando parecer la adulta que no soy. Estuvimos hablando de los collares que talla Mitsuo y de Tatsuya que es el mejor surfero de Tokio y uno de los mejores de Japón. Y esto sí que me resultó sorprendente. Le veía enfrente, aniñado, quince años, risueño y musculoso y de repente pensé: hay tanta gente que nos rodea con un don especial y que no lo sabemos. Parecen simples niños, hombres, mujeres viviendo el día a día y de pronto te sorprenden con sus habilidades y te das cuenta de que somos unos animales privilegiados. Nunca he visto un cuerpo sinuoso tan perfecto como el de Tatsuya rompiendo las olas con un estilo embriador. Nunca me di cuenta de cuan impresionante puede ser una milésima de segundo congelada en una imagen. Y al verle tan honesto y partícipe entendí que no era una gran sorpresa que fuera un campeón. La cena, deliciosa. Yo estaba cansada. Decir adios a algo tan personal es realmente muy difícil.

El blog de Tatsuya, el campeón de surf. Está en japonés, así que lo siento por aquellos que no hablen japonés, pero las fotos son fantásticas, independientemente de que ames o no el surf.

http://tatsuya236.blog64.fc2.com/

QUARANTINE / CUARENTENA

Quarantine is voluntary or compulsory isolation and it refers to forty day period. So this was the time I isolated in Japan from Madrid just to cure myself of a soul curious disease. But once I arrived in Japan I realized that I have to communicate, read and think in English, so that´s part of the reasons why I change the language´s blog. I want to apologize from the Spanish followers as they are moaning and telling me they can´t read good in English. So after some calls and comments I discover that most Spanish people is unable to read or talk normally English language. I am sad to hear that, as the people that said such a comment to me have a medium/tall intellectual level so I assume they have to speak good English, first language in the economic world, followed by Chinesse and Spanish. Anyway I´ll do my best to try a bilingual blog as long as it concerns my time and my mood to do it. But as I finished my quarantine in Japan (still my head and heart there) and I have to speak in Spanish again so it won´t be a big problem to think and write in Spanish. I only discover that I am happy writing in English (maybe not perfectly) because it is sounds better, rhythm, style, tone... I will think deeply about this... I might find the big answer why I don´t write something longer than a passable short story in Spanish... Maybe is just because I need to find the three levels equilibrium, don´t you think so, my dear? And it is easier to do it in English. Sure. Gomenasai.

Cuarentena se refiere a la idea de aislarse de forma voluntaria o forzosa durante un periodo de cuarenta días. Los mismos que me he aislado en Japón para tratar de curarme de un extraña enfermedad del alma. Una vez que llegué a Japón me di cuenta de que tenía que comunicarme, leer y pensar en inglés (es bastante complicado encontrar a gente que hable español). Por este motivo terminé cambiando el idioma del blog. Quiero pedir disculpas a los seguidores españoles del blog (pocos pero fieles) ya que se están quejando de que no pueden entender perfectamente el inglés. Así que después de unas llamadas y comentarios descubro -para mi sorpresa- que la mayoría de españoles no son capaces de leer o hablar un inglés fluido (lo achaco más bien al doblaje en televisión y en cine, a la educación y a la cultura en sí). Me entristece saber que la gente que no le apetece leer en inglés tiene un nivel intelectual medio alto. Asumo que deben saberlo ya que se trata de la primera lengua en el mundo, la del imperio económico pues con el inglés se hacen todas las transacciones económicas del planeta y más allá, seguido del chino y del español. En cualquier caso y llegados a este punto intentaré hacer un blog bilingue inglés y español dependiendo de mi tiempo y mi humor para escribir en un u otro idioma. Un poco para que no se quejen mis amigos y darnos placer mutuo todos a todos. Pero como ya he terminado mi cuarentena en Japón (todavía mi cabeza y mi corazón siguen allí) y tengo que hablar español de nuevo, no creo que me suponga un gran problema volver a pensar en español y por lo tanto escribir en español. Sin embargo he descubierto que me gusta escribir en inglés (aunque no sea perfecto) porque suena mejor, el ritmo, el estilo, la cadencia, el tono... Pensaré largo y tendido al respecto. A lo mejor encuentro la respuesta al por qué no puedo escribir algo aceptable más largo que un relato corto en español... A lo mejor tan solo necesito encontrar el equilibrio y para mí resulta más facil hacerlo en inglés. ¿No crees, querido?

RED ANTS, RED FUTURE

I remember... The solitude of an illness man while looking out of the window knowing he can´t share anything with anybody... That´s it. Only him. Only a transparent crystal window separating him from the rest of human beings, ants moving to and fro, and he can´t touch them. But from the top of the building he feels superior, the great lord, the God or Kami reacting with disdain and depotism over this little creatures. I used to be happy observing him from the building in front with my binoculars, moving slowly in his naked room, only books around and cups of coffee. Sometimes the ashtray was overflowing with his cigarette butts, maybe his girlfriend´s cigarettes as some of them had red carmine on it. But I always saw him alone, open curtains showing me his interior, the titles of his books, his hard coughing, his sad eyes. I was wondering how could she be, the lady sharing his naked room, or maybe what is it inside his naked body. I liked him by the way only because he had a dark and hidden side I wanted to discover, like Nietzsche or Kafka. Just like when I was a child... Having my toys, open and ruin them so then I was not interested anymore. Could be maybe months, years perhaps watching out of my window to his, trying to find the mechanism to open this new Kami toy, running home after my job in the center of the city and spending hours and hours looking at him doing basically nothing. And only for that I was trapped in his net and solitude. Living his illness together but never talking or sharing anything more than time in the distance. He never saw me... I thought. Never a little glance or smile. Just him reading and reading and observing and drinking and smoking. Somedays his courtains were closed so I couldn´t see him. I imagined that he was in company of someone and the evidence of the red carmine butts when he pulled back his courtains. So he knew I was looking? Of course. Why in the world to draw the courtains if you think nobody is watching? I was rejoiced in deep emotions. What could be next then? Maybe he could open his cristal window and talk to me, just say a shy hello or just look at me straight to my eyes and say is silence:

Could you please stop observing me?

Something for me to know he was alive and he knew about me... But it never happened. Just he disappeared like drops under a summer shinny day, like the care you share long distance, like the Japanese cities under American bombs. Just dissapered in a shouting and struggeling silence. He just leave me alone in the silence of his solitude. Maybe dead, maybe scaping from himself with his girlfriend, maybe just wanted to hide from me and talking to me for first time saying something like:

I saw you and I am fed up with you, loosing your valuable ant time with me. You are the queen of the ant´s nest so could you please do what you have to and leave me alone with my reading, my cigarettes and my coffee, please.

Maybe, who knows, who cares now that the window is open and nobody is inside. I would like to know if someone is going to rent his flat. This flat that my next-door young neighbor said has a plague of red ants now. I should go and take a look inside. Maybe he just forgot the sugar of his coffee so ants are having a happy party. Maybe just he wanted me to go into his naked ex-house and tell the ants to organize themselves for the future... The red future. For sure.

COFFEE'S DIARY

18th December, 2008.

I have two coloured pens I bought in Muji. Depending on my mood I choose one colour or another thanks to I have six different options to choose plus a pencil to underline interesting things in Dazai Osamu´s books. Today I am in a murasaki (violet) colour state. It could be red feeling like when the revolutionary snake visits me. But violet is made with red and blue so I feel like that. I am in a typical japanese cafe style, near Yotsuya Station, only 100 meters from Cervantes Institute in Tokyo. I have been there talking about the Matsuo Basho´s Documentary and other projects and visiting the building, the biggest after the one in Madrid. And now I am here celebrating my coffee time. It is the second time I am delighted with a cup of coffee in Tokyo. The smell, the soft flavour... It reminds me those days in Bogota and Cali more than 6 years ago when a beautiful lady offered me a cup of colombian coffee and I couldn´t say no, in spite I was not driking coffee since 1996. Sounds like tastes like smells make you travel in space and time with a kind of magic that is part of our brain nature. Memories. So I am celebrating different moments at the same time in a place that could be anywhere. In this case it is a lovely and a cozy illuminated cafe with small silver spoons, steel and cooper pots, and shinning cups covering the dark sakura (cherry tree) wood. In front of me 15 plates with drawing images of snowing paradises, some Christmas trees and those Russian trinoes to move in Siberia. Sparkling cristal glasses, gliterring crokery, old french ashtrais and cigarettes consuming near the shinning water into the silvery sink. Some media class businessmen are chatting in their japanese language while the young waiter dressed in a red, brown and white checked shirt is washing the blue flowery french cups. It´s 4:20 local time in Tokyo. I drink coffee with enjoyment. Outside the sun has gonne to other country and the lights of the city give this discreet feeling that we are saved. My expensive bill waits for me: 630 yens for a sweet, hot and delicate coffee, aromatic and tender. The same that helps me travelling. (I am on a lonely road and I am travelling. Travelling, travelling, travelling. Looking for something what can it be...). It is not cheap enough for a long distance trip? I am thinking in having another one: this one took me to Colombia, Russia and Dakar. Maybe next surprises me more. Coffee places are a man´s land. You see this Tanizaki Junichiro essay of 1933 about light and shadow in japanese culture, this amazing book that Eiras gave me long time ago known as In Praise of Shadows? This is exactly the same feeling I have inside the place. Old wood, brilliant shadows... I can´t explain the feeling I have serving the small spoons of white sugar -I am not a big fun of sugar anyway- but I love the vapor going out of the hot coffee, here and there, expanding in the local air to finally disappear, just as human conscience. I drink and smoke. Next to me a gaikokujin (foreigner) alone, thinking and ordering to the waiter. I realized he is affected by my writting so he decides to take out of his bag his old and big notebook. Enough difference between him and me: he is drinking a biru (beer) so he is not going to be able to travel as much as I do. Same cigarette in left hand, only his pencil moving very slowly over the white squared paper. Definitely it is not the same. Oh, what can I say about writting! This nothing and all experience we can have through it. Nothing and all at the same time. The perfect lyric concentrated in the tongue, going beyond the flesh and defining just a momentary feeling we have. No wonder why writting can substitute psicologists, alcohol sometimes, drugs some others...

After broken and disipating my blue side I begin to write in red colour. Here she is: the revolutionary and woman in love I am. I would like to deal with it, broken the magic and be as critical as I used to. But what can I say when Dazai Osamu is next to me, his soft and hard book I am reading: The Setting Sun talking about the red love and red revolution. I had underlined with my pencil a few lines I would like to share with you:

"Twelve years have passed and I have yet to progress a step beyond the Sarashina Diary stage. What in the world have I been doing all this time? I have never felt myself drawn toward revolution, and I have not even known love. The older and wisher heads of the world have always described revolution and love to just as the two most foolish and loathsome of human activities. Before the war, even during the war, we were convinced of it. Since the defeat, however, we no longer trust the older and wiser heads and have come to feel that the opposite of whatever they say is the real truth about life. Revolution and love are in fact the best, most pleasurable things in the world, and we realize it is precesily because they are so good that the older and wiser heads have spitefully fobbed off on us their sour grapes of a lie. This I want to believe implicitily: Man was born for love and revolution."

The times goes by in a smooth level. Still my second cup of coffee in my right side. Coffee seeds as well looking at me and travelling all around Japan: Niigata, Sendai, Nikko, Kyoto, Matsushima, Kobe, Osaka, Nara, Hiroshima, Kouchi... The Sea of Japan, the crystal water breathing over my feet, licking my face. So then I don´t want to move our of here, my mum´s utero. No travels are allowed except for chatting and sharing about different cultures with the Turkish man sitting next to me, the same that was trying to write but couldn´t do it, the same who is working in an Italian restaurant, whom I am speaking in English and listening French music with: 20´s and 30's jazz. A beautiful melody dancing in the corners of the shadows of the wood. You know, I am so in love of coffee.

4th January, 2009. Coffee´s Dairy

1st cup of coffee: 17th of December 2008. Tokyo.

2nd cup of coffee: 18th of December 2008. Tokyo.

3rd cup of coffee: 18th of December 2008. Tokyo.

4th cup of coffee: 24th of December 2008. Kouchi.

5th cup of coffee: 25th of December 2008. Kouchi.

6th cup of coffee: 25th of December 2008. Kouchi.

7th cup of coffee: 26th of December 2008. Kouchi.

8th cup of coffee: 27th of December 2008. Kouchi.

9th cup of coffee: 27th of December 2008. Kouchi.
10th cup of coffee: 28th of December 2008. Kouchi.

11th cup of coffee: 29th of December 2008. Kouchi.

12th cup of coffee: 30th of December 2008. Kouchi.

13th cup of coffee: 30th of December 2008. Kouchi.

I've stopped smoking: 31st of December. Kouchi.

14th cup of coffee: 2nd of January 2009. Tokyo.

15th cup of coffee: 2nd of January 2009. Tokyo.

16th cup of coffee: 3rd of January 2009. Tokyo.

17th cup of coffee: 4th of January 2009. Tokyo.

18th cup of coffee: 4th of January 2009. Tokyo.

19th cup of coffee. 4th of January 2009. Kamakura.